This is all Illinois's fault. Or Miami's. Or whichever jabroni awarded this ball to the Hurricanes late in a 2013 NCAA tournament game:

Oh no I read the comments

Oh no, college basketball listened to Youtube commenters. In the aftermath of that game the outrage was sufficient for the NCAA to institute video review on late-game out-of-bounds plays. Thus last night, when a Michigan win-or-OT situation turned into a loss thanks to a replay that literally took seven minutes as two referees pored over every frame of a Dakota Mathias rake on Charles Matthews and eventually awarded the ball to Purdue.

This was insane for many reasons.

One: I spent 39:54 watching a great basketball game between two good teams exchanging haymakers, and then I spent the rest of my life watching the back of a ref.

Two: any replay that takes that long surely falls in the realm of the disputed and should not be flipped.

Three: that call would never be made at any point during the first 39:54 because it does not matter if an offensive player who has been stripped of the ball going to the basket has his finger on the ball a nanosecond after the defender. The basketball rule book functionally reads "if a player is stripped going to the basket it's his team's ball unless it hits his leg or foot. "

Applying a different standard to a late game possession isn't correcting a call, it's getting it wrong in the name of pedantry. This happens a half dozen times in any basketball game...

...and 100% of the time the ball is awarded to the offense. That's the rule even if it's not the rule.

Four: Matt Painter essentially used a coach's challenge, which does not exist in basketball.

Matt Painter says Purdue had to ask for a replay on the Matthews play. Officials weren’t going to check it. ‘I had no idea. I was just guessing.’

Surely the response there could have been "no" or "hard pass" or "Matt you seem nice and you've constructed a fascinating basketball team but please go to hell." It was not. So it goes.

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I'm obviously pretty cheesed off that Michigan lost one of their vanishingly few opportunities for a win that could move them up a seed line, but I'm even more vexed that the basketball game I was watching went from wonderful tense fun to a conference call. This is bad. It is bad for the game, and not just people walking bow-legged to work this morning.

If we're going to have replay—and, yes, we probably should, Illinois fans—we must protect the game from idiot pedants. And refs are all idiot pedants. That's the job: memorize this rule book and show up in front of thousands of people who hate you to enforce the rules of a meaningless game. Occasionally Kentucky fans dox you, and you kind of deserve it. This only appeals to the kind of person who loves correcting other people's mistakes more than he enjoys not having his life threatened. Only an idiot pedant signs up. TV Teddy is their king for a reason.

So. You get 30 seconds and then the screen turns off. Because if it's not obvious with three replays it's not worth correcting. Especially in a game like basketball where a gentleman's agreement not to foul someone out on some bullshit (unless their name is Mo Wagner) exists. Especially in a game like basketball that is lovely when it's flowing up and down the court and grimly dismal during its fouls-and-timeouts-and-more-timeouts-and-now-replays closing act.

Because if you didn't care about this game to start, and then got into it because it was terrific, you finished the game watching NCIS. Either figuratively, because it turned into a forensic exercise, or literally, because you changed the channel to one of the 17 different stations constantly playing NCIS.

Basketball should not have timeouts*, and it should take steps to assure replays are barely long enough to get one glue commercial in. Let's march to the grave properly distracted, people.

*[As previously discussed I am willing to accept a system where coaches can call timeout if they snip off one of their digits with garden shears and hand it to the ref.]

BULLETS

I will be very Brad Stevens. Stevens famously started walking towards the handshake line in some Butler game that came down to a buzzer-beater before that buzzer-beater went in or not, because one basket wasn't going to sway his opinion of his basketball team much. That's some cold-blooded Vulcan behavior and we'd do well to implement that in the aftermath here.

Michigan went toe to toe with a very very good team that was playing superbly, and the fact they lost is less important than they way they played. If you believe that opponent 3PT% is largely out of your control this game looks pretty dang good. And about that...

A legion of Rip Hamiltons. Dan Dakich made an excellent point when he noted the sheer speed at which Purdue's gunners were running through their cuts and getting to their spots. Maybe half of Purdue's threes weren't drive-and-kick or extra-pass-to-exploit-rotation. They were lightning cuts off screens that Michigan didn't have much shot at defending. As I mentioned on twitter:

The difference is that Hamilton wasn't canning threes. Purdue is, at a Peak Beilein Team rate of 41%.

In this game Purdue hit 57% on a relatively high rate of threes (their 3PA/FGA of 37% is about the NCAA median), and I think that was more Purdue than Michigan. M has more or less maintained their ability to prevent launches from deep—currently 14th in the country—despite Billy Donlon's departure. They just ran into a buzzsaw.

[@ right: Campredon]

Hello, sir. Lovely of Isaiah Livers to provide sustenance to Ace in his time of need, what with his 249 ORTG. Ten points on four shots will do that. Especially when two of them are on this:

Remember last year when DJ Wilson would turn into the best basketball player in history for three minutes a game? Yeah. If Livers can add that kind of take to his suddenly-surging three point shooting... you know what? Never mind. I'm not trying to get him drafted.

Isaiah Livers is terrible. This is the end of the post, NBA scouts. Promise.

Anyway: since Big Ten play resumed Livers is 7/9 on twos and 7/8 on threes. He's also a clear upgrade from Duncan Robinson in all non-scoring ways. I think MGoBlog says this every 30 seconds, but it's past time to start him and let Robinson return to the microwave role he's excellent in.

This seems to be happening functionally: Livers as played 27 minutes against Purdue and Iowa. Now if Robinson could get his minutes when the opposition has 7th and 8th guys on the floor that would be *kisses fingers*.

7'3" guy on 2 guard [Campredon]

Panic on the streets of Lafayette. I don't know if Matt Painter's constant absurd switching was brilliant or idiotic. It was both? At the same time? Probably? Yes. It oscillated wildly between those two states on possession to possession basis.

On some possessions Michigan would stare blankly into the middle distance for 25 seconds before Charles Matthews thundered at a 7'2" or 7'3" guy with little success. On others Zavier Simpson would check to make sure he had the laces right on the basketball—another good Dakich catch—before lifting up in front of a helpless Isaac Haas. Michigan seemed to figure it out in the second half when they made their push to tie, and then it evaporated late on two or three horrendous offensive possessions, any one of which could have produced a game-winning basket.

I don't know. It's weird and desperate and I feel like if Michigan saw that kind of thing on a regular basis they'd destroy it. Since they don't you get a lot of isolation plays from a team that doesn't have a lot of good iso players, and the offense can turn into a confused slog. The rematch should be fascinating.

Teske is a dude. Michigan got a fast break bucket in the second half largely because Jon Teske was the tallest tree around; he emerged to get a DREB that looked more like an OREB because he was swarmed with dudes. That was a four-point swing. His extended PT in the second half saw Michigan get a point closer to Purdue, and while he didn't score his two OREBs and generally excellent defense were critical.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Michigan loses by ten if you replace Teske with Mark Donnal.

DREBs closer to real. In a similar vein: Michigan won the rebounding battle against Purdue with a 34% OREB rate vs Purdue's 24%. This isn't quite as much of an upset as it might seem like. Despite having the two biggest guys in the conference, Purdue's pretty meh on the boards.

They're not bad enough that Michigan will turn up its nose at a W in that category. You might want to sit down for this: Michigan is currently the best DREB team in Big Ten play. Please tell me you're not reading this while driving oh no you hit a tree.

A brief scheduling note. Michigan played Jacksonville during their annual Very Bad Team Invitational in December. This is going to be a boat anchor all year as the Dolphins trundle towards an 11-20 record, per Kenpom.

Purdue, on the other hand, scheduled Lipscomb. Lipscomb is also an Atlantic Sun team, but they're projected to win the conference. They've played four major-conference teams and lost by 22, 23, 10, and 22, but if and when they're 22-7 at the end of the year against a schedule virtually identical to Jacksonville they're going to be much less of an RPI disaster.

I believe the first review in the NBA for that play, Chris Paul got swiped like that and they awarded his team the ball. They reviewed it and the defender actually just swiped his arm (which would be a foul) and the ball went off Paul's hand (because the defender got no-ball). Possession awarded to the defense. Lame.

of my issues with review. In situations like that, while during the review process, you are able to cleary see a missed foul call, you either; a) award it to the offense or b) state that during the process of the review, it was determined that the defensive player fouled the offensive player resulting in him losing possession of the ball.

Much like in football, if they are reviewing a fumble and during the review, clearly see that a facemask on the RB occured, state that and enforce the penalty.

fuss is about the game being called and, therefore, played in a fundamentally different manner in the last one minute as it is for the previous 39. All game long, the players and the refs rely on regular-human vision to determine the outcome of plays, but in the last minute they go to a monitor that is literally splitting 1/100th of a second to determine the outcome. Essentially, this kind of review changes the sport that the players are playing. Look at how ridculous "the process" has become in pro-football. Everytime a player makes a catch where any part of their body is on the ground, the offense hurries to the line to snap a throw-away down just so the refs don't blow the whistle.

Look, it is very likely that sometime in the next year, that Michigan is going to benefit from something similar to this. Nobody is saying that we are the only victim or that anything can really be done about it. But we can bitch about it a little bit.

This is the real problem, as Brian iterated. That was a very enjoybale fun game to watch last night with two really good basketball teams throwing haymakers back and forth. To put it on pause for 7 minutes to review this just killed the watchability of the whole thing.

Every single one of us would complain if they reviewed this for the entire game. This one instance took 7 minutes. I do not want a 7 minute break for the refs to look at a screen multiple times every game.

We bitched about not having instant replay to review plays and now we bitch about having instant replay to review plays.

Long story short they got the call right, it was annoying how long it took, and they only focus on it towards the end of games due to how long it would prolong the game if they did that for 40 minutes and the end of game is a more crucial time to get calls right.

The call on the court is "Out of Bounds, offense ball, because defense fouled and instead of giving a weak foul call we are just going to give the same result without penalizing the defense, everyone good on that? okay? yeah."

The review only looks at the OOBs in which of course Michigan touches it last, that is physics conducted at 1/12th of a second in time. If they change to rule to everytime the ball is swiped out of possession and directly OOBs, the defensive team is awarded possession, then fine by me. But call it the same way all the time. Not only during the final 2 mins based on review.

defender swipes down, hits the arm and ball then on the rip through of the swing he grabs on to matthews forarm/wrist. that is where the foul should be called as there is clear contact with matthews' forearm

I'm not sure coming back would even be a good idea. He is not a 5 and will never be a rim protector/5 at the next level so it's not helping him and probably detrimental to have him keep getting abused/exposed in that role.

I would imagine scouts want to see him defending other stretch fours with a rim protector on the court to see how he does in that role and see whether his defensive liabilities can be masked by playing with a rim protector.

I don't know if another year of college where he's not going to be play the position for which he'd play in the pros will help him relative to playing where he can be in that role.

Going to be very interesting to see what happens with him.

He certainly has to get more consistent on offense if he's ever going to make it. But that can be done at any level and honestly, I think NBA teams might discount Michigan offensive players at this point because the system is so good and gets guys a lot of open shots.

agree. The best help that Wagner can get for his game is at the professional level at this point. And there are very few players remaining in the NBA like Hass. Wagner will be guarding a lot of other stretch guys who shoot 3s more so than Hass type guys. When Mo is making threes, Michigan is awesome to watch. However, it happens in fits and spurts and so infrequently that reliance upon it can be detrimental to the team's outlook in any given game. I'm not saying I would not welcome him back with open arms if he decided to stay, but I'm not sure what one more year in the college game will do for him. He is basically as good as he is going to get at this level right now.

the more solid players and options the better. Would be great if he game back. But for his sake, I would completely understand if he left to go overseas or some situation that he can play stretch 4, even if he wasn't going to get drafted (although I think a team would take him in the 2nd round just on the off chance that he can hold up at that position).

I agree 100% that the review monitors should turn off (in all sports) after a relatively small amount of time. Not only will it keep the action moving, it is inconveivable that anything should be considered "incontrovertible" if it requres 5 minutes of review.

considering there's a lanky 7'3 guy between Matthews and Wagner. Very tough pass to make and super risky because if it gets tipped, it's off to the races for Purdue. He did the right thing, just couldn't get enough separation on Mathias, who is a sneaky elite defender.

For a freshman, this guy is really, really impressive. Especially for someone who wasn't a 5 star recruit. He is WAY better than DJ Wilson was as a freshman, and look how well he finally developed. Along with Poole, Brooks, Teske, Simpson, and the 5 guys coming in next year, the future is bright for this team.

Regarding Duncan Robinson and this microwave role you have repeatedly mentioned.

First - It is time to make Livers the starter. Period. The way Robinson has been playing the past 10+ games, he can get minutes where Beilein can find them at this point.

Second - Robinson is not a microwave. He can not get points. He can make threes when his shot is falling (which it is not). He periodically has scored points off of his ability to make threes. End of story.

Third - There is a microwave on this team. It is Poole. He can come in and get 8-12 points in 5-10 minutes in any number of ways. That is what Vinnie Johnson could do. I feel strange having to explain this to a native of the Detroit area.

Totally agree. In fact at one point there was an interior pass back out to a wide open Brooks, he hesitated and didn't take the three, and I turned to my son and said, "if he had any confidence he would have taken that shot," and my son replied, "or if he was Jordan Poole."

Poole oozes confidence and I love it. And, unlike the majority of our team, he is a great FT shooter to boot.

He's a full-on raging gas fire. He looks and acts like he's playing in an All-Star game, and he's one of the top stars -- ultra-confident, relaxed, and ready to put one up at a moment's notice from 25 feet and in. All of that is mostly good (b/c he is seriously skilled), and bad (e.g., he can get out of control).

I'm excited about him, and think he should play a bit more, as you said. But his skills and passion need to be properly harnassed and deployed.

Part of the problem is that his minutes are coming against starters this year. Great defenders like Vince Edwards that can play help defense and still recover to him (watch the Illinois game again and you'll see he twice caught a pass, didn't quite have enough room to shoot, shot-faked and then forced a rushed 3 and missed both times - that's not a good shot but that's a lot of what he's getting now).

If we played him in a reserve role when guys like Ryan Cline are on the court, he would have better matchups, might be more effective (maybe even microwave-like) and could give Livers a breather which is about as much as we can ask for at this point.

Agree that microwave is a generous term (as would be super-sub, sixth man, etc). He really just a "guy-who-can-come-in-and-give-a-far-superior-player-a-breather-while-at-least-knowing-the-system", i.e. a standard 7th/8th man.

Why not have Teske guard him on the throw-in??? Either he'll have to try to lob over a guy who's a foot taller, or Haas will have to come out farther from the basket to get the inbounds pass - and it will take him longer to get back onto the low block to make his plodding move to the basket.

there was 4.8 seconds left. That's a lot of time. Edwards is fast. If he can get it in against Teske (which might be slightly more difficult than the guy who did guard him but still a likely occurence), all he has to do is streak to the basket on a give and go.

Teske should have been on Haas, everyone else stick to their man like glue and it'd be tough for them to score.

I didn't understand this last night. It was clear they wanted to post Haas up in the paint and try to get the lob into him with 4 seconds left. Why not sub in Teske? They had just fouled, there was an opporuntity to do so without calling a timeout.

Their highest kenpom rank in the last 5 years is 271. The are an eternal 300ish team. They only have one winning record in the very bad ASun conference in the last 5 years (at just 8-6 two years ago, which isn't that good because the conference is Lipscomb, FGC and then a flaming pile of dog poo sitting at the bottom of a crater). They were 5-9 in the conference last year.

They were certain to be either a really bad team or an awful disaster of a team. Eithey way it's an RPI anchor.

I had oceans of snark to type about you mistakenly putting a hockey gif under the paragraph about Livers. "Yeah, tough to shoot well from 3 when you're wearing ice skates and carrying a stick!" Yuk, yuk, yuk.

Then you went and fixed it, and all my snark must remain untyped. Furthermore, most people will read this post later and have no idea what I'm talking about, and I'll look dumb. It's tough to be me.

Can you make a gif of the play with about 3 minutes to go in exactly the same spot where a ball goes out of bounds and they gave it to Michigan? Same thing happened - Purdue player swatted the ball but it may have lingered on the Michigan player's fingers due to physics and there was no question they'd keep the ball with Michigan.

Livers is way too legit. He's going to be a star for this program if the NBA doesn't steal him away from us (a la DJ Wilson).

Zavier Simpson is turning into a dude. I love watching him and Rahk out there. They play so well in the half court offense. And you can now safely add their names to the list of guards that Beilein has crafted into legit offensive threats at Michigan.

Mo and Matthews are really good. But they may not be doing enough to warrant a spot in the first 40 picks of the NBA draft. Coming back is good for us. Coming back is bad for our current scholarship count.

The Bad:

#22. Please bring him off the bench when the other team brings in their bench players. Having him and Mo out there at the same time makes our defense look like trash. I would love to see the numbers vs Purdue for the +/- of Mo/Duncan vs Teske/Livers.

The refs. I'm still sick that this crazy good game had to end with two calls that should never be made in the final minute of a tied basketball game. Sure, call that a foul on Mo in the 1st half, just because. But to have a game decided on a call reversal that took 7 minutes, and you were probably not 100% sure of, and then give the team free throws on a clean steal minus the small grab (how much of an impact does that have on a dude who is 7' anyways??), just blows my mind. My blood is still boiling, and I'm sick and tired of not getting the benefit of the doubt. What's the point of home court/field advantage if the refs don't abide by the unwritten rules of the sport? I'm mad.